MSM Suddenly Wakes Up, Realises Obama Is A Chicago Politician…

She came to town as a certified member of Chicago's great and good…

Not words you usually see used to describe Chicago politicians…

One way and another, Desiree Rogers seemed perfect for her new position in Washington – until a couple of Virginia parvenus crashed a state dinner.

Whoops!

. The question now is, will Barack Obama jettison his social secretary just as he dispensed three weeks ago with the services of the White House counsel Gregory Craig?

Well, of course he will. It’s what he does, after all.

Anyone remember Reverend Whatshisface..?

Mr Craig had become the face of the administration's failure to close Guantanamo Bay; Ms Rogers' claimed failings, in comparison, may seem rather less significant. Still, it can only be said that the 50-year-old holder of a masters from Harvard Business School had been riding for a fall. The first African-American social secretary, she delighted in making news even before the Obamas took up residence in the White House on 20 January.

As Robin Givhan, the fashion critic of The Washington Post, tartly wrote after Crashergate broke, Ms Rogers "arrived in Washington this year to great fanfare, no small amount of it of her own making".

Meow!

Unfortunately, her critics say, somewhere along the way, Ms Rogers seems to have stopped paying attention to the nitty gritty of her job – like making sure a person from her office was at the White House entrance on occasions like a state dinner, to make sure people who said they were invited actually had been.

That sounds like a familiar complaint. Sure I've heard it said of someone not a million miles away…

According to The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, she was "unnecessarily politicising an office that required old pros". In The Huffington Post, meanwhile, Jacob Heilbrunn damned her as "a figure out of Vanity Fair – preening and self-indulgent, lording it over her table at the state dinner, while ignoring her own mundane duties".

Hmmm, unnecessarily politicising things, preening and self-indulgent, hopelessly incompetent. Are we sure she isn’t actually Obama in drag?

Has anyone seen both of them in the same room together?

But the episode is also a warning, another small sign of how the mood is starting to sour on the "brand Obama" that Ms Rogers came to Washington so intent on promoting. Among the complaints is that Mr Obama has brought with him his own mafia, an incarnation of the infamous Chicago machine – but a machine that can't even run a state dinner properly.

Heh!

When the bloom comes off the rose, it comes off fast…